


saltwater's no drink

by remnantof



Series: Destiny PWP [1]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: A little more Enemies with Benefits, Choking, Deaf Character, Deafness/Amputee not part of kink, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, NSFW Exo mods, Oral Sex, Other, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Riding, Robot Sex, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Time Travel, Vaginal Sex, Xeno-Robo Tongue, amputee character, new identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 00:36:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19983145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remnantof/pseuds/remnantof
Summary: If fucking with Leo's backups for attention is wrong, he's not giving Grey a lot of incentive to be right.  PWP with Exo modifications and weird immortal Guardian problems.





	saltwater's no drink

**Author's Note:**

> Leo is another OC belonging to [Comptine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/comptine). Grey is mine, and is actually Cael come back from the far off future and posing as a Hunter, playing with Ahamkara revival in his past to change some fates. He stops being Cael a few centuries after his husband dies. Leo had a longstanding rivalry/animosity with Lux when he was alive.
> 
> As for the porn, YMMV on how messy is too messy with boundary negotiation and aftercare. Sometimes you surprise your Enemy With Benefits in a Venusian bunker and literally shove your tongue down his throat until he passes out. Sometimes it be like that.

There’s plenty on Venus to slip past the cloaking on the old bunker, and it isn’t always Vex trying to interface with the locks on his doors - the Vex are just better at it. Piko sparks into the stall in a warm blossom of light, picking up Grey’s head with his attention. The spray of water is a heavy thud on his head - he feels more than he hears, and Piko’s voice creates the same kind of pressure, speaks somewhere inside of his skull.

“There’s a Ghost trying to hack the door.”

Little bit like Mara, that, but he hadn’t stuck around to learn the trick. Hadn’t realized how late in his mother’s life her hearing had gone, hadn’t realized how far past his third or fourth century he’d be living to deal with it.

Just the way it goes: flip a coin for long enough, you start to lose.

Live long enough, you realize winning and losing start to feel the same.

 _Tell him he might get in faster if he threw his shield at the door._ With that plating on his face, it can be hard to tell what the big guy gets a kick out of, and what really grinds his gears - but Grey knows it’s both, when he adds, _Tell him it’s more suited to his class._

“And which of yours is irritating Titans suited to?”

_Both._

The Vex, when they choose to vex him, do so with a singular focus. They tend to open the main door sooner than he could ever disable the mines on the track down, a tragedy for all the weekends he hadn’t wanted to spend laying new ones, and all the conveniently nonexistent Vex dependents, who no longer have supporting Hobgoblins to put them through university. Really, he should lay his perimeter further out, mine the riverbed, put some new code in the locks.

Really, he should move his whole operation into the Ascendant Realm.

Instead, he asks Piko to cancel the fireworks, and puts his head back under the spray, feeling it part the uneven sections of his hair and sluice down his back. He’s got the minutes it’ll take Artan with the lock, the longer minutes it’ll take Leo to dispatch whatever followed him into the ravine, and the dignified plod of those heavy boots down the track, exactly too narrow to sit astride a sparrow in.

One day, Grey’s gonna show him how to side-saddle through it at cruising speed, and the coin toss is whether Leo will walk his happy ass behind, or throw sparks from his knees, shoving himself down the shaft to prove something.

He just hopes he gets it on camera. When he cuts the water, the world is blank again. Humid air not quite cold against his skin, old world tile gleaming orange. Most of his lighting is repurposed from the Fallen, flares stuck in the corners of rooms, his bright Awoken eyes all the sharper since he lost his hearing. In the half-light and heat, everything feels - held. Something’s closing around him - something he’s imagined, or that phantom sense that precedes a certain Titan’s entrance. 

So big he changes the pressure of a room, Grey might joke. No reason to tell someone like Leo why he’ll never really sneak up on him - might make him stop trying.

Grey breathes deep, puts the towel over his head and leaves it, trailing water up the tiled stairs. Feels like thighs squeezing his head. Feels like a hand on his throat. Piko says, “He’s at the second door,” and Grey stretches his arm up until the towel falls down around his shoulders, hangs over the stump of his left. Prosthetic’s still on the bench, but as he passes through the main bunker, he picks up the baldric instead, slings it over his right side with only the towel to keep the leather and scales from rubbing his skin.

A good host waits for his guest in the vestibule, sword in easy reach. Sword on his back makes the Solar knife something of a surprise, if still only a formality, when he throws it at the gap in his door.

Leo catches it with a hand gloved in Void, violet shimmer warping brighter as the blade burns through. He steps fully into the bunker, lets it fall into dying sparks, shakes out his hand. With his helmet off, there’s a bare inch between the ceiling and the top of his head, and the width of his shoulders in - and maybe out of - his armor forced him to come through the door at a slant. He won’t be able to close the door until he’s half across the room.

Grey’s idling in the corner like he’s going to do something about it, five naked feet and seven one-armed inches of marked up flesh and oily Awoken blood, with a sword he doesn’t have a lot of space to draw and water running into his eyes from his hair. He slicks it back with his fingers and dries them around the heat of another knife, flipping it next to the faded spade on his hip.

The lights in Leo’s eyes draw where he’s aimed them, and he doesn’t take the second step. Despite the Venus heat he’s dragged down with him, he gathers himself up in his Braytech thermals like he’s the first man to walk on Mars, stripped only of his helmet and gloves.

 _Are you going to seed one of my backups into your microwave every time you want my attention,_ he signs. It almost isn’t speech, just an exercise in his frame’s articulation. The difference between knowing a language, and having your body process one you’ve downloaded recently, he supposes. He can’t tell if there’s something to it - a gravity, or Leo actually pissed with him - that the exo isn’t just relying on Piko to translate.

Never can trust the accuracy of a Ghost who hates your guts.

Artan, for all his cracks and audio idiosyncrasies, can be relied upon to get the point across. When he resolves at Leo’s shoulder, Grey doesn’t even fake the knife toss at that fractured eye. He flips it higher, striking quick at the handle to catch it as he shrugs. He doesn’t need two hands to feign innocence.

Doesn’t need working ears, to know what that little flare around Artan means. What the Ghost is probably playing back on Leo’s command - he’d recorded the message himself, even if he didn’t rig a microwave to do it. One day he’s going to get bored enough to seed Leo into the husk of a Harpy, and Leo should really scrub the backup off his system on one of these visits before he does it.

Instead, he’s standing on the tropical side of Venus dressed for a Martian Wonderland, hand held open under his Ghost and chin set like he’s presenting to a jury of more than one naked Hunter who can’t hear his recording. Last time they were on Mars, Piko informed him that Artan has started cobbling together his own speech with slight dip and gasp of Grey’s voice, words clipped out of recordings. The big guy needs more friends, even if Grey isn’t surprised to find him at a lack.

He hopes it only gets worse from here. Hopes it drives Leo up the wall; hopes it warms his mechanical heart.

Grey tosses the knife into his shoulder to free his hand, smell the insulation on the armor burn around it. If he can get some moisture in there before Leo leaves, it’ll be useless back on the tundra. He licks water from his lips as it drips from his hair, warmed by the Solar leaking off him, the humid air leaking in the door. With his hand free, he flaps two fingers at his ear: _Can’t fucking hear you, dipshit_ , and raises it in a dismissive wave when Leo bristles around the knife, points at Artan in his periphery to ask after Piko - _Why isn’t she translating?_

When Leo pulls the knife free, the burn of his frame smells the same as the quilted pattern of his jacket. Grey wonders what it might smell like if he lit up the fur on his collar. Killjoy would probably just smother it in a bubble before he found out. While Artan fixes the damage, Grey looks for his pants in a kind of retaliation.

Hard enough to sign one-handed, and harder to care how he sounds to Leo - he lifts his hand to rub the towel half-ass over his hair. “What are you doing here?”

Piko, listening for him while he’s under the towel, doesn’t transmit anything. He turns to find Leo waiting for his eyes, door closed and big exo looming, close enough to pull the sword from his back. Let him: Grey expects he’d wield it like he signs, replaying steps from an archive. He’d pull a blade from the fires of creation to match, and Artan would have to shiver his broken shell through the rez.

It’s pity that’s gonna undo him, really. Too old not to go soft; what’s Leo’s fucking excuse?

Maybe he doesn’t have one - the blade stays heavy at Grey’s back until he shrugs it back down against the table, and Leo’s still talking with his hands. Maybe he really thinks Piko would let Grey miss anything important. Maybe he actually has something important to say.

_Why’s your arm on the bench? My last repairs should've lasted you longer than this._

Grey barks a laugh, lifts the stump of his left shoulder. “My armpit isn’t plasteel; I try to scrub them both at the same time. Why are you _here_.”

It’s pretty, in its own way, the wrists and joints moving precisely through each word. Artan, with his radio clips and old music, is less robotic in his communication. _Because you took one of my backups and -_

“I didn’t seed anything,” Grey says, as Leo looms a little closer. It’s not really a step that gets him there - legs long enough he just has to reposition his boot and sort of follow it in. Grey would cross his arms to square against that press of his presence, but - one of them’s on the table behind him. He puts his hand on his hip instead, Queen of Spades like a ward set in his elbow. The flare of light in Leo’s mouth is short, maybe a grunt - but what’s interesting is how little of it there is to see. When Grey continues, he’s watching the plates of his face, paying new attention to how much his mouth doesn’t - hasn’t moved.

“I just plucked a string of code until it made some noise.”

They’re close enough, it should be uncomfortable for Leo to get up his arms to sign, but he still doesn’t speak. _Because you wanted something._

“And you crossed two orbits to deliver.”

The next flare of light might be a growl. There’s something to that sense of pressure, a _mounting_ , that makes Grey flatten his lips and deny a shiver. Leo slings his hip in a way that draws Grey’s gaze down the line of his body. He needs to get out of that gear before the Venus heat bakes his systems. Grey’s just had his second rinse of the long day, sweating through his civvies. Water drips down his spine from his damp hair.

Leo signs, _But I do, deliver._

“Not if you overheat, you don’t.” He tips his chin, mouth still set in a line. Leo cants his head, acquiescence, the signal that erases Artan in a violet flare. Piko will draw him back out soon enough, settle in a corner and do whatever she does to get him talking. She’s gotten motherly in her old age, and no matter her grudge for the Guardian, Artan’s still a Ghost who got shot.

It was him or Epsilon, so far as the story’s been told.

The spades etched to Grey’s skin are every reason neither of them should be doing this, and maybe part of the reason they do. Winning feels a lot like losing, when you live long enough to make a guy’s husband call your name, a century after he’s dead.

Maybe he doesn’t care anymore, same way Grey doesn’t care what name Selena calls him. Same way Grey doesn’t care who slants their hip into his idling hand, so long as it’s set higher than his own and warm to the touch. Leo undoes the hard clasp of his collar and pulls the zipper down over his chest, angled into Grey’s hand. The fur opens around his shoulders as he shrugs out of the sleeves - Titans, never dressed for any occasion.

 _I did consider that_ , he signs, the jacket hanging from his elbows. Even Grey will use his voice to keep to the flow of getting his clothes off, and he turns to find his arm on the table, sends word through Piko to Artan, back to Leo, so he’ll know she’s online.

 _You in any hurry for me to put this back on?_ Leo’s presence at his back usually comes with a low rumble, a quality of a voice that Grey can’t break down into words, but there’s just that _pressure_. A moment squeezing him tighter, closer to some end he started in the middle of the night, whispering to a piece of a man he stole from Bray’s archives.

Hello there, Leonidas; it’s me, God.

He could have just sent the access code to Artan and waited for Leo to make use of them on his doors. He could have destroyed the backup when he found it. No reason to make the man dance on the edge, except for who they were. Leo hasn’t fucked with Lux or the City in over a hundred years; Grey hasn’t been Cael, in his own inside-out experience of time, for many more centuries than that.

He lost Lux twice, coming back for more time, and it wasn’t Leo’s fault.

He’s still going to cut him into enough pieces that Rasputin can’t put him back together, someday.

Just the way it goes.

Leo still doesn’t speak. His hand gathers the short trail of hair at Grey’s neck, squeezes the triangular slope of his shoulders from it. Might be a little pacifying, even if Grey holds the line of his body to deny it. Leo moves it to the side, running it down his arm. No hurry. Grey lifts it over his head to turn between Leo and the bench, light on his bare feet. No hurry, no irritation, no hurt.

Leo _looks_ at him. Piko reads silence, and the weight that settled on him in the showers flattens his feet to the floor. Squares his stance a little, an imperious tip of his chin when he meets Leo’s gaze.

“There’s something when you move.” Leo transmits the message to him through their Ghosts, and Piko doesn’t filter it, lets Artan clip it together from radio chatter and Grey’s own voice. Like hearing ghosts in a Vex gate, like a chorus of dead dragons clawing that Ascendant shore. “Little point to your fingers and feet. Way you arrange those lines up all pretty. Like you used to be something, like you never could change your bearing enough to do more than pretend.”

He’s clearly gone about this wrong - stayed too far off the grid, minded too much of his own damn business. Yor probably never had to deal with his booty calls comparing him to Rezyl, but he probably managed that by putting thorns in their Ghosts.

Too nice, that’s his problem. He proves it by dropping his hand to grab Leo between the legs, squeezing the - soft mound he’s a little surprised to find, with Leo’s propensity for bending him over the bench and taking irritation out on his ass. “You always this smug when you figure something out,” Grey asks, cupping him through his fucking tactical snow-pants anyway.

Leo does that thing again, where his feet don’t seem to leave the ground, but he’s entirely up in Grey’s business. Puts the weight of himself in his hand and grinds down, like he can feel much of anything through the thick material.

Pity’s gonna be what makes Grey cut him out of his snowsuit with Void.

 _Just saying,_ he signs, leaning back from the axis of Grey’s hand. _You dig into me, I dig back.“_

Which is both fair and obvious, and not why Leo is here, if he’s wearing his good pussy under all that insulation. ”Sure,“ Grey dismisses, withdrawing his hand to pull a cold knife from the Void: ”And I’m just saying, you’re going to overclock before I can fuck you, if you don’t get out of that ridiculous getup.“

He expects something then - the flare of a scoff in Leo’s throat, the approximation of his voice through Piko, telling him he still has both of _his_ hands, and there’s only a belt between Grey and what he wants - but it’s just that silence, just that weight. Grey goes to say something else, a final warning before he slices the guy’s pants down his inseam, but that pressure resolves in his mouth, ties his tongue, closes up his throat.

Something’s going to happen, and he’s half-hard with expectation, half-irritated enough to shake himself once like a dog. Water clings to the plates and cords of Leo’s abdomen, amber in the low light that neither of them really needs.

Nocturnal creatures, outside of time, left behind by death. Grey sets the other shoe to one side of his mind and drops to lick the beads of water into a smear, knife a cold line splitting Leo’s pants from the inset of his thigh to his knee.

He can wear the towel home, for all Grey cares.

Synthetic muscle tightens; one hand coils fingers in Grey’s wet hair, the other finally works open his heavy belt. Counter to the slouch of material over his hips, Grey pushes his hand up the new hole in his pants, feels Leo widen his stance as he finds the swell of that artificial mound, angled plates mimicking humanoid bone and muscle down his front. His thumb finds the curve first, traces the slit before his fingers follow. Just to feel the heat coming off it, just to smirk up at the lubrication leaking over his fingers when he pushes the first two inside.

Leo yanks him up by the hair, pins him to the bench as soon as his fingers pull free of his pants. ”Not yet,“ he growls, Piko translating the first sound he’s made since he walked through the door. ”Greedy.“

”I’m a service top,“ Grey protests, then laughs at himself, then stops when Leo uses the hand pinning him to pick him up by the throat. If he’s greedy for anything, it’s being picked up and having his mouth unceremoniously smashed against an Exo face plate. Even with the modifications to soften his mouth, make it a thing that can move, Leo’s got some fangs in the original plating, filed down and left underneath. Grey lets the shock settle through his jaw and bites his lip, wraps his legs around Leo’s waist, and hopes he’ll bite him back. One day he’s gonna put something similar in his pussy, really live up to his namesake, and when he’s finally allowed to lay down and die - Grey hopes that’s how he goes.

”You’re a menace,“ Piko transmits, like Leo knows what he’s thinking. Like Piko’s just adding her own commentary. Grey knows he didn’t say it out loud, still trying to bite that mouth _open_ , and as far aside as he’s set the other shoe, he’s starting to think it needs to drop -

He tilts his chin back, held too firm to pull his head in any direction. ”Has the cat got your fucking - “

 _Tongue_.

His mouth is only open a sliver, but the thing in Leo’s takes that moment to strike. It _feels_ like a tongue at first blush, something like the synthetic material Leo used for his lips, but once it tests over Grey’s lip and teeth, it just keeps going. Less a tongue than a new appendage - articulated, prehensile. A firmness and heat like skin over muscle, goes in smooth until it catches its girth between his fangs, adjusts and _keep pushing_.

Leo squeezes his throat and bends at the waist, resting his back on the hard edge of the workbench. Grey can’t pull back, can’t breath but through his nose when Leo’s new toy shoves itself down his throat - and he jumps from half-hard to bottoming out his hips against Leo’s front, catching his balls on his fucking zipper when he tries to rub against him.

That _hurts_. Grey opens his mouth wider and the appendage expands, coils from the back to fill the new space. His hand scrabbles down for Leo’s waistband - Hell, he starts pushing his pants down with his heels - and groans so hard he feels it vibrate back through Leo’s face.

There’s only one way left to communicate, Piko transmitting: “Cat’s got yours.”

Two ways: Grey raises his hand and punches Leo in the jaw. Splits his knuckles on the plating and feels drool spill down his chin. Can’t believe Leo left his cock at home just to feint around _this_.

Maybe he is greedy, rubbing himself against Leo’s frame and hoping Leo still plans to bend him over the bench and fill him up. Disappointed when Leo presses the tip of his tongue against the back of his throat and he does, actually, gag.

Leo squeezes his throat from the outside, tickles the inside, bores one backlit set of eyes into another while he feels Grey choke.

He’s been choked out before. Been held down under a Titan’s hands until he woke up on that beach, dragons whispering from the surf. Leo presses him down into the bench, digs in every finger, watches him hemorrhage tears and snot and spit - and feels when he makes himself _swallow_ before sucking air through his nose.

His fingers loosen, don’t quite dig, loosen again. He holds Grey down on the bench and massages his throat until he’s breathing something like even, if thin, and Grey feels himself whimper when he retracts the tongue back behind his mouth plate.

Retracts it, but doesn’t pull away. Part of it pushes back out and lays sideways across his mouth, wipes some of the spit away and leaves him gasping when Leo kisses him. Everything is fuzzy, a little dark and coming back to amber light. At some point, he wrapped his hand around one of Leo’s antennae, every muscle in his arm tensed - to push him away or hold him close, he doesn’t know.

Leo is never so much himself, never so much no one else, when he pulls back from the edge and doesn’t ask if Grey is okay. There’s a confidence in it - like he knows Grey’s limits better than he would, like he knows what they _should_ be, and Grey lets him, Grey -

Grey’s real curious what he’ll do when he gets it wrong.

“Organics,” Leo says, up close and with his mouth against Grey’s. He can feel the rumble of it in time with Piko’s translation, and it’s only the focus on his breathing that slows the needy cant of his hips. Leo’s other hand is set under one of his thighs, over scar tissue so old it’s gone softer than the skin around it. Grey can feel his pulse beating against his palm. Leo plants his feet at a new angle under the bench and uses his grips to push Grey over it, tools scattering, room temperature metal a little cool against his back. Leo’s hand adjusts at his throat, thumb stroking under his chin - he’s not going to ask, and he’s not going to apologize, but he’ll wait for Grey’s pulse to settle before he kisses him again.

When he does, it’s just the test of that tongue between his teeth, taking the wet from his mouth and using it to suck on his bottom lip until he groans. Leo slides him over the bench until his ass squeaks over it, damp with water and sweat, and Grey sets his feet on the edge, opens his legs under Leo’s weight.

“You never choke on my dick this pretty,” Leo murmurs up close; Piko might hate him for the things she has to translate alone, and Grey grins against his mouth so he knows he got the message.

When he answers, his throat feels fucked open and raw, worse than the months where he doesn’t speak. “Necessity’s the mother of invention.”

Leo puts his tongue back in his mouth to shut him up, and Grey sucks on the tip of it. He’s a big boy, hundreds of years old and just as immortal as the hunk of plasteel looming over him. He takes one foot and presses it to the line of Leo’s thigh, where it meets his hip. Two distinct sets of hard then soft plating, with a roll of muscle between that he’s been known to bite down on. When Leo shivers and bumps the bench with his thigh, Grey knows he’s been more than pretty enough.

If there’s anything in the bunker that can take Leo climbing on top of it, it’s probably the floors - but the bench is a decent runner up. Piko put his sparrow on it once, and he maybe didn’t fuck his sparrow blind, but it held.

He doubts Leo cares if the whole thing buckles down and snaps Grey’s feet off. He’ll probably start offering to build him those too, taloned Exo toes that still fit in a pair of pumps if he wants a show. Leo’s probably fucked his sparrow on his work bench, back on Mars. Leo’s probably got the bench they should be doing this on.

Leo nudges Grey slant and climbs out of his pants, the thud of his knees on the bench vibrating along Grey’s back. He knows well enough to reach down and wrap his hand around his cock, aim it up and stop squirming for how deep Leo’s kissing him - before Leo slides his knees out and braces with his elbows bracketing Grey’s shoulders. Sinks himself down warm and wet over Grey’s cock, until he can brush his clit with his thumb. He sucks on his tongue and moans, wishing he could wrap his mouth around the tightly coiled cluster of wires. Wishing Leo would take him apart and put him back together, some frame full of holes for him to fuck, some perfect thing he could keep.

Bullshit thinking, really. As soon as he was perfect, Leo’d probably never look at him again.

Grey braces his foot on the bench and pushes up into Leo, thumb on his clit and his finger pointed down the warm crease of his slit. Feels it stretch and curve around his cock on each thrust, the rest of his hand keeping it shallow enough to tease. He knows from past experience, it’s built tight and a little deep - room for him to fill it up and make Leo take some of him home when he’s done.

He always likes that idea - something he can do that Leo can’t, a little _fuck you_ to chase his quick retreat. Even keeping it shallow, it flexes the muscle in his thighs, makes him fuck up into him a little mean. Quick, short, raking over the sensors in the first few inches of his hole while Leo grinds down against his thumb. If he had his prosthetic handy, he’d zap his clit until he dripped his reservoir empty over his cock, but he knows what he’s going to do if he ever finds himself past Leo’s limits -

He just doesn’t know if Leo’s going to like it, when Grey has to drop the shit and ask him if he’s okay.

More than heat, dropping into his guts. He opens his mouth wider, inviting that kiss deeper, just to stop thinking. He knows where his hand is, this time, knows to bite down on Leo’s tongue until he’s ready to choke out. Grey waits until he can feel a rumble in the chest covering his own, can feel Leo squeezing around his cock like he can suck it deeper into his cunt - waits until his jaw is aching from holding Leo back - and opens for him at the same moment he pulls his hand back and fucks in to the hilt.

Leo matches him length for length, crushing their foreheads together to get every inch of his tongue down Grey’s throat. Fucking him as much as he’s fucked, Grey’s heels sticking to the table and giving him purchase to lift against Leo’s coiling crouch.

When Grey comes, still working his back and thighs to push every drop deep into Leo’s chassis, he can hardly breathe, hardly make the sound that buzzes up Leo’s tongue. There’s an indent from Leo’s plating in the flesh of his brows, new cuts around his mouth from Leo’s teeth, his own spit running behind his ear. He makes what claws he can of his hand and digs them into the soft parts of Leo’s thigh, pumping his hips until the exertion meets the choke -

And he whites out,  
And he blacks out,

And he wakes up to Leo butting him head to head, pulling him by the wrist to rut against his hand. He gasps for air, and when his fingers go a little less numb, he can feel his come leaking over them - curls them in to get at Leo’s hole and give him something to really grind off on. And when the rest of him goes a little less numb, he can feel the good ache in his legs, the sweat on his skin, the rumble that builds in Leo’s center and resolves against his throat, bruised and bitten to shit as Leo shakes over him like a storm he couldn’t outrun.

His hamstrings feel like he gave it a go.

Grey lays under him, swallowing his own spit to soothe his throat, until Leo crashes silently to the side of him. He feels a few more items rattle off the bench, isn’t fussed enough to see if one was his other arm. Isn’t fussed enough to do anything but catch up on all the coughing he’s needed to do, deep and rough, another sound he can feel in his skull, vision flaring red behind his eyelids.

When he opens his eyes, Leo’s transmatted his latest toy out of his mouth and started working his jaw in wide circles, and he’s got a hand rubbing between his legs. Probably hurts too good to let go, yet, and thinking about that just makes Grey want to roll over and fuck him again.

In a minute. Learn to breathe before you run, Guardian.

Grey gulps the sticky air; asks Piko to start up the vents. Might pull the Vex too close for comfort, and he has her enable the mines. Let Leo hold onto more than his junk on the way out.

His breathing eventually goes even; Leo eventually stops venting steam in low puffs across the bench, starts using the Void to pull heat from his system. Things get Grey’s version of _quiet_.

“Are you ever going to destroy that backup,” Leo asks, when their bright gazes catch, heads laid against the table. Its dull metal reflects gold and white, some version of them on the other side that gets to be some kind of safe, in the blurry after. 

The Grey under the surface asks: Are you ever going to stay the night? Are you ever going to kiss me like we’re the last people in the world, and it matters? Are you ever going to get tired of me? Are you ever going to be sorry?

The Grey on the surface is going to make sure of the last one, on some level. He reaches over and runs his finger up that antenna, feels the curve where he bent it in his grip. Runs it between his tacky finger and thumb until it straightens again.

“Eventually,” he sighs. “Once I’ve dug up and destroyed the rest. Then I’ll come burn you off the frozen face of Mars.”

Leo mirrors the motion with a hand laid gentler over his throat, thumbing the back of his ear. He feels something vibrate along it, through the metal of the table, sees the lights go on at the back of Leo’s throat. He lifts his hand and signs: _Promises._

“Yeah, you big ugly terror. Promises.”

When the light flares again, he swears the plates of Leo’s face make something like a smile.


End file.
